The aggregation of transaction data for transaction accounts can be a valuable metric for a variety of industries. Content providers, advertisers, merchants, manufacturers, urban planners, and more all may benefit from detailed information regarding consumer spending. Consumers themselves may also benefit from such information, as they may start to receive more personalized content, offers, discounts, and more, and may receive better service from merchants and other entities as a result.
However, many entities that aggregate transaction data, such as payment networks, do so while maintaining anonymity of the transaction accounts, in order to ensure a high level of consumer privacy. In one example, transaction data may be stored for an account that is associated with a generic consumer having specific demographics that may correspond to a plurality of actual people, and thus may be associated with any number of people and not tied to any particular consumer, and thus not personally identifiable of any consumer. While such information may still be valuable to merchants, advertisers, and other third parties, the transaction data is often captured for every account without regard to accounts that may be linked.
For example, when a consumer uses a payment card, the transaction data associated with the account number of that payment card may be aggregated and stored (e.g., to an anonymized number or otherwise stored without information personally identifiable to the consumer). However, if the consumer is issued a new payment card on the same account, such as if an issuer issues a new card on the account with a new number in order to prevent fraud, the transaction data may be stored with respect to the new number. As such, the entity may unknowingly aggregate transactions for a single person under two different accounts. This may result in aggregated transaction data that is inaccurate and may therefore be less effective to advertisers and other third parties.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution to link account profiles for a reissued transaction account while maintaining a high level of consumer privacy.